The Mexican government is not going to remain silent in the face of the attacks of certain US Republicans in the political war on fentanyl. López Obrador has launched all the machinery available to counter the accusations made in recent days, and this Tuesday he has offered some information to ensure that “Mexico does not cause the problem, but is a main part of the solution”, in the words of the Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. The president has said that the drug comes from Asia, that 86% of those imprisoned for drug trafficking in the United States are citizens there, and has offered data on the tons seized in Mexico, as well as the destruction of clandestine laboratories where said substance is processed. Likewise, he has read the letter that he has sent to the Chinese president in which he requests his collaboration and information to stop the trafficking of fentanyl.
“Fentanyl is not produced in Mexico, but we want to help,” said the president, who has left his American counterpart, Joe Biden, out of this political fight at all times, for whom it implies political interest for the good of his people. López Obrador has read a letter addressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping in which he maintains that the consumption of fentanyl in Mexico is low, but informs him that it caused 107,573 deaths in the United States in 2021. The president is addressing China because he was told so they asked a group of US senators from both parties on a recent visit to Mexico, he recounted. “Only 30% of what is consumed in the United States enters through our border,” he told Xi, and explained how “in a fallacious and irresponsible way,” senators from that country blame Mexico for this misfortune. “We did not ask for your support before these rude threats [de los republicanos de intervenir militarmente en México], but aid for humanitarian reasons to control this traffic”. In the letter, he requests information about who imports, in what quantities, in what vessels, where the drugs come from and where these substances arrive.
“Mexico’s efforts on fentanyl are the most important in the world. No country fights trafficking like Mexico. Graham hasn’t had a chance to read it,” Chancellor Ebrard said. In this way, he responds to the invective of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who days ago presented the legislative initiative for the Mexican cartels to be considered terrorists so that the United States Army has the possibility of intervening in Mexican territory, something that López Obrador has considered a “disrespect and an unacceptable threat.” The president focuses on the “manipulation” of the Republicans. “It is a lie that migrants bring fentanyl into the United States.” A poll he has shown at the conference shows that 60% of Republicans believe that, as well as 39% of US citizens in general. “It’s false,” he said. “It’s Hitlerian, Goebbels propaganda.”
The Mexican president has rejected the accusations of Senator Graham, “his disinformation surely coming from the DEA”: “It is not true that there are Mexican territories dominated by drug trafficking.” Foreign Minister Ebrard recently met with the Mexican consuls in the United States to counter this information coming from the hard-line Republicans. Today he has come out to fight again the version that Graham extends with a brief history of fentanyl, the beginnings of it as anesthesia in operating rooms and as an analgesic for severe pain, especially derived from cancer. “Until the mid-nineties it was not an issue, but then it became a pandemic due to its high addictive power, to the point where there are now more deaths from fentanyl than from traffic accidents,” Ebrard has documented.
When the United States complains about drug trafficking, Mexico counteracts with the entry of weapons through the northern border. 1,791 lives have been lost in this country with weapons from there, Ebrard has said, including some in the arrest of Ovidio, the son of Chapo Guzmán. And he has reminded Republicans that guns are sold in the United States with a simple driver’s license. “Everybody knows that. And at arms fairs, many do not have a license to sell, ”he assured. “Don’t lie,” he tells Graham. “Any citizen buys weapons there in any corner.” “We ask that the United States check the vehicles in the last mile so that they do not bring weapons, just as we monitor at customs that no drugs enter the United States,” the foreign minister responded to questions from American journalists in the morning.
The high economic profitability of fentanyl, López Obrador tells the Chinese president, has displaced other narcotics. 100 kilos are equivalent to a million doses and suppose more than 400,000 dollars. “In Mexico, consumption is low, we fight this traffic to help the United States with strict control at ports so that only what is destined for pharmaceutical consumption enters.” The president has pointed out his good relationship with China, which is why the senators asked him to address Xi, something he did in recent days.
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